We’re about 15 minutes west of Denver and have just flown into some clouds
\nat our assigned altitude. It is occasionally quite bumpy! If I were writing
\nthis by hand in my regular journal, this would be quite unintelligible. At
\nleast this way, the words can be read; whether or not they make any sense is
\nup to someone else to decide.\n<\/p>\n
\nI left the house at about 6:30 for an 8:00 a.m. flight. That’s a bit late,
\nactually, that I would have preferred, but that’s how things worked out. If
\nthere are a lot of folks going through security, I possibly could have had a
\nproblem. However, the airport was relatively quiet. The flight from Colorado
\nSprings to Denver was full — and this flight from Denver to San Jose is
\ncompletely full. No empty seats on the flight at all.\n<\/p>\n
\nAirport security is quite a bit different than it was a year ago. It’s no
\nbetter (and in fact may be worse) but is definitely different. One of the
\nchanges is “random” searches of people before boarding the flight. As an
\naside, it’s quite amazing to me the things that are found in this random
\nsearch that the screening at the concourse didn’t pick up. The folks doing
\nthe screening usually pick someone in the first two or three people to board
\nthe plane. That person is taken aside and thoroughly searched, including
\nremoving shoes and belts. It takes up to ten minutes to do this screening,
\nso as soon as someone is picked out of line, then the folks behind move
\nthrough the boarding process quite rapidly.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe general process is to board First Class and higher-level frequent fliers
\nfirst. If you’re a frequent flier, you have to have been asleep not to
\nnotice how the “random” search candidates are selected. Today as we were
\ngetting ready to board this flight, the agent called for First Class, 1K and
\nPremier Executive frequent fliers. No one approached the agent to present a
\nboarding pass!! A second call went out and more folks gathered, but no one
\napproached to board. Finally one soul went up, and headed through to
\nboard — he wasn’t selected! Another wait. Then a fellow, part of a group of
\npeople traveling together, ordered one of his subordinates to go “volunteer”
\nto be searched so that the boarding process could begin. As soon as he got
\nthere, everyone lined up. The agent joked with the screening person, “See,
\neveryone knows!” Well, we sure do. Hence the observation that security,
\nwhile different, is not necessarily better.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe’re approaching western Colorado and Eastern Utah. Grand Junction,
\nColorado, is on the left front of the airplane. We’re flying a bit more
\nnortherly than in the past few months. Because of the flight restrictions
\nassociated with the Winter Olympics that were held in Utah in February, the
\nairlines had adjusted their routes to fly through Central Utah rather than
\nover Provo as they head into the San Francisco area. The routes are just
\nthis month being adjusted back to normal patterns. But, it’s quite cloudy
\nand there’s only an occasional view of the ground. I’m in a window seat. The
\nguy next to me in the middle seat is a young fellow with the most beat-up CD
\nplayer I’ve seen in many years. It’s held together with Duct Tape! There
\nisn’t much room on the table, partially because I’m quite wide front to back
\nand that the seats are pretty close together. I’ve got to keep kind of an
\neye on the guy in front of me because if he decides to recline his seat, it
\ncould possible break the display on the laptop computer I’m using. So far
\nhe’s been quite content to visit with his wife seated next to him in the
\nmiddle and hasn’t made a move to recline the seat. I’m of the opinion that
\nwith these seats as close together as they are, none of them should be
\nallowed to recline.\n<\/p>\n
\nYesterday was a pleasant Sunday. I had Priesthood Executive Committee
\nmeeting at 7:30 a.m. in the Bishop’s office. That was followed by the
\nmeeting block. The High Councilor assigned to our ward, Peter Burnett, came
\nover to the house around 3:45 in the afternoon to conduct his monthly PPI
\nwith me. Then at 8:00 p.m. we went over to Duane Slocum’s to give him a
\nblessing. He’s going to have cataract surgery on Wednesday and wanted a
\nblessing before he went in for the procedure.\n<\/p>\n
\nPEC is held generally on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. The 3rd Sunday is Welfare
\nMeeting at 7:00 a.m. followed by Ward Correlated Council at 7:30. There are
\na lot of folks attending PEC — and the Bishop keeps adding folks to the
\nfray. We can barely all fit into his office. If he adds anyone else, we’ll
\nhave to find another room. The major activities going on right now are:\n<\/p>\n
\n1. Aaron’s Camp for the young men 14 years old and up. This is a camp held
\ninstead of a scout camp or other young men super activity every other year
\nto help prepare the young men to be ready to go on a mission. It’s a fairly
\nexpensive affair, costing about $175 per boy. So there’s a lot of fund
\nraising activity going on to finance these boys.\n<\/p>\n
\n2. Young Women’s Camp. This is put on by the Ward on alternate years with
\nthe Stake putting it on. This year the cost will be about $100 per girl. So,
\nthat requires some fund raising as well.\n<\/p>\n
\n3. Getting a sister’s house ready for sale. She is a single mother having a
\nlot of difficulty maintaining the house and yard. She’s decided to sell the
\nhouse and move into something that would be maintenance free for her. So,
\nthere’s a lot of work needed to make the house ready for sale. This Friday
\nevening and Saturday morning there’s a work project to paint the front of
\nthe house and trim the weeds and bushes. It’s one of about 3 or 4 work
\ndetails needed. The house has been listed for sale and it’d be good to get
\nthe work done soon.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe’ve also got several people out of work with slim prospects of work in the
\nnear future. There’s not much that can be done other than making sure that
\nwe’re being generous with our Fast Offerings.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe’re flying over some mountains covered with snow — so we must be
\nsomewhere in the Salt Lake area. It’s still very cloudy so not a lot of
\nopportunities to see what’s going on down below. I very seldom sit in a
\nwindow seat — I usually want to be in an aisle seat so that I’m not hemmed
\nin. There weren’t many options on this flight, however.\n<\/p>\n
\nI’ll be in San Jose for the week, flying back on Friday afternoon. I’ll get
\nhome around 7:30 p.m. on Friday. Other than being available to the folks in
\nCalifornia who work for me, there isn’t a lot of requirement to fly out
\nthere. I go at least once a month. It is a good way to build frequent flier
\nmiles, however! We’re definitely in the building mode, since all of our
\nSaturday’s are busy at the Temple. That limits our ability to go anywhere
\nthat would require an airplane. I think the next time will be in September
\nwhen we fly to Vancouver, Canada, to board the cruise ship for the trip up
\nthe Inside Passage. We will do a few things this summer. We’d like to go
\nsomewhere for Memorial Day if we can work out how to do that without taking
\nmuch vacation. We may decide to take the vacation time anyway. The Temple
\nshuts down for the first two weeks of July and that is when Soda Springs is
\nholding a multi-class reunion. We will go over that way for the week. The
\nreunion is on the 4th of July. Wendy is getting married in August and Nina
\nwould like to be in attendance, so we’ll take a week to pull the trailer
\nover to Oregon for the wedding and back. I’ll try to put a business trip to
\nGresham in the equation to give us some additional time on vacation and get
\nsome of the expenses paid.\n<\/p>\n
\nDad is in the hospital in Idaho Falls. He had a rough night Saturday night
\nand was transported by ambulance to the hospital on Sunday morning. The
\ndoctor’s don’t know what is the matter, exactly, just that something is the
\nmatter with his heart. They are doing a catheterization this morning,
\nprobably as I’m writing this, and we hopefully will know more as the day
\nprogresses. Mother called yesterday afternoon with the news. She feels that
\nthings are generally OK, now that he’s at the hospital. She’s sleeping right
\nin the room with him, so she isn’t getting much rest, either.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe Temple on Saturday was very hectic. We were very short of ordinance
\nworkers, both brothers and sisters. So it was a scramble all day long to
\nmeet the assignment schedules. We have a prayer meeting at 12:05 p.m. which
\nconsists of a hymn (I play the organ and Nina conducts the singing),
\nfollowed by a prayer and a spiritual thought. Then the Matron or Assistant
\nMatron (depends on which member of the presidency is on duty that
\nafternoon), presents the confidential information for the sisters. They all
\nleave the chapel and the duty member of the presidency presents the
\nbrother’s confidential information. We then go to our training meeting.
\nThat’s where the assignments are handed out and we have a (hopefully) short
\ntraining lesson. I’m currently assigned to be the shift training, so I
\npresent this material. We then go to our assignments. Saturday’s instruction
\nis the longest lesson in the book and was on officiating an endowment
\nsession. It took 20 minutes to go through the material.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe had a new brother assigned to our shift, so I spent a few minutes getting
\nhim oriented and we tossed him into the fray receiving patrons at the veil.
\nHe had a good afternoon, I think! No question about his feeling needed. I
\nfilled in wherever we were short and then officiated on the 4 p.m. session.
\nIt was a busy, but fun day. I certainly enjoy the afternoons we spend at the
\ntemple. It’s a major time commitment, but one of the more enjoyable things I
\ndo each week. Afterwards we went out for tacos with the shift supervisor and
\nhis wife, Br. and Sister Stott. We learned that he was in Japan in the Air
\nForce the same time we were at Yokota AFB. He wasn’t a member of the Church
\nat that time, so we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to meet. Small world!\n<\/p>\n
\nWe’re over western Nevada and I think we’ve begun our descent. We’re out of
\nthe clouds right now, but it is partly cloudy below us. A lot of clouds
\nahead, which usually means the Cascade Mountains. So we’ll be on the ground
\nin about 45 minutes, I think.\n<\/p>\n
\nSo that’s all for today.\n<\/p>\n
This entry was copied from a older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We’re about 15 minutes west of Denver and have just flown into some clouds at our assigned altitude. It is occasionally quite bumpy! If I were writing this by hand in my regular journal, this would be quite unintelligible. At least this way, the words can be read; whether or not they make any sense … Continue reading En-route Denver to San Jose<\/span>